The Man from the Bitter Roots Page 5

  Sprudell sat up suddenly and said, with savage energy:

  “Look here—I’ll give you a thousand dollars to get me out of this!”

  Uncle Bill looked at him curiously. A thousand dollars! Wasn’t that like a dude? Dudes thought money could do anything, buy anything.

  Uncle Bill would rather have had a sack of flour just then than all the money Sprudell owned.

  “Your check’s no more good than a bunch of dried leaves. It’s endurance that’s countin’ from now on. We’re up against it right, I tell you, with Toy down sick and all.”

  Sprudell stared.

  “Toy?” Was that why Griswold would not leave? “What’s Toy got to do with it?” he demanded.

  It was the old man’s turn to stare.

  “What’s Toy got to do with it?” He looked intently at Sprudell’s small round eyes—hard as agate—at his selfish, Cupid’s mouth. “You don’t think I’d quit him, do you, when he’s sick—leave him here to die alone?” Griswold flopped a pancake in the skillet and added, in a somewhat milder voice: “I’ve no special love for Chinks, but I’ve known Toy since ’79. He wouldn’t pull out and leave me if I was down.”

  “But what about me?” Sprudell demanded furiously.

  “You’ll have to take your chances along with us. It may let up in a day or two, and then again it mayn’t. Anyway, the game goes; we stop eatin’ altogether before to-morry night.”

  “You got me into this fix! And what am I paying you five dollars a day for, except to get me out and do as you are told?”

  “I got you into this fix? I did?” The stove lids danced with the vigor with which Uncle Bill banged down the frying pan. The mild old man was stirred at last. “I sure like your nerve! And, say, when you talk to me, jest try and remember that I don’t wear brass buttons and a uniform.” His blue eyes blazed. “It’s your infernal meanness that’s to blame, and nothin’ else. I warned you—I told you half a dozen times that you wasn’t gittin’ grub enough to come into the hills this time of year. But you was so afraid of havin’ six bits’ worth left over that you wouldn’t listen to what I said. I don’t like you anyhow. You’re the kind of galoot that ought never to git out of sight of a railroad. Now, blast you—you starve!”

  Incredible as the sensation was, Sprudell felt small. He had to remind himself repeatedly who he was before he quite got back his poise, and no suitable retort came to him, for his guide had told the truth. But the thought that blanched his pink face until it was only a shade less white than his thick, white hair was that he, T. Victor Sprudell, president of the Bartlesville Tool Works, of Bartlesville, Indiana, was going to starve! To freeze! To die in the pitiless hills like any penniless prospector! His check-book was as useless as a bent weapon in his hand, and his importance in the world counted for no more than that of the Chinaman, by his side. Mr. Sprudell lay down again, weak from an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

  Sprudell had not realized it before; but now he knew that always in the back of his head there had been a picture of an imposing cortège, blocks long, following a wreath-covered coffin in which he reposed. And later, an afternoon extra in which his demise was featured and his delicate, unostentatious charities described—not that he could think of any, but he presumed that that was the usual thing.

  But this—this miserable finality! Unconsciously Sprudell groaned. To die bravely in the sight of a crowd was sublime; but to perish alone, unnoted, side by side with the Chinese cook and chiefly for want of trousers in which to escape, was ignominious. He snatched his cold feet from the middle of the cook’s back.

  Another wretched day passed, the event of which was the uncovering of Sprudell’s fine field boots in a drift outside. That night he did not close his eyes. His nervousness became panic, and his panic like unto hysteria. He ached with cold and his cramped position, and he was now getting in earnest the gnawing pangs of hunger. What was a Chinaman’s life compared to his? There were millions like him left—and there was only one Sprudell! In the faint, gray light of the fourth day, Griswold felt him crawling out.

  Griswold watched him while he kneaded the hard leather of his boots to soften it, and listened to the chattering of his teeth while he went through the Chinaman’s war bag for an extra pair of socks.

  “The sizes in them Levi Strauss’ allus run too small,” Uncle Bill observed suddenly, after Sprudell had squeezed into Toy’s one pair of overalls.

  “There’s no sense in us all staying here to starve,” said Sprudell defiantly, as though he had been accused. “I’m going to Ore City before I get too weak to start.”

  “I won’t stop you if you’re set on goin’; but, as I told you once, you’ll be lost in fifteen yards. There’s just one chance I see, Sprudell, and I’ll take it if you’ll say you’ll stay with Toy. I’ll try to get down to that cabin on the river. The feller may be there, and again he may have gone for grub. I won’t say that I can make it, but I’ll do my best.”

  Sprudell said stubbornly:

  “I won’t be left behind! It’s every man for himself now.”

  The old man replied, with equal obstinacy:

  “Then you’ll start alone.” He added grimly: “I reckon you’ve never wallered snow neck deep.”

  For the first time the Chinaman stirred, and raising himself painfully to his elbow, turned to Uncle Bill.

  “You go, I think.”

  Griswold shook his head.

  “That ‘every-man-for-himself’ talk aint the law we know, Toy.”

  The Chinaman reiterated, in monotone:

  “You go, I think.”

  “You heard what I said.”

  “You take my watch, give him Chiny Charley. He savvy my grandson, the little Sun Loon. Tell Chiny Charley he write the bank in Spokane for send money to Chiny to pay on lice lanch. Tell Chiny Charley—he savvy all. I stay here. You come back—all light. You no come back—all light. I no care. You go now.” He lay down. The matter was quite settled in Toy’s mind.

  While Sprudell stamped around trying to get feeling into his numb feet and making his preparations to leave, Uncle Bill lay still. He knew that Toy was sincere in urging him to go, and finally he said:

  “I’ll take you at your word, Toy; I’ll make the break. If there’s nobody in the cabin, I don’t believe I’ll have the strength to waller back alone; but if there is, we’ll get some grub together and come as soon as we can start. I’ll do my best.”

  The glimmer of a smile lighted old Toy’s broad, Mongolian face when Griswold was ready to go, and he laid his chiefest treasure in Griswold’s hand.

  “For the little Sun Loon.” His oblique, black eyes softened with affectionate pride. “Plitty fine kid, Bill, hiyu wawa.”

  “For the little Sun Loon,” repeated Uncle Bill gravely. “And hang on as long as you can.” Then he shook hands with Toy and divided the matches.

  The old Chinaman turned his face to the wall of the tent and lay quite still as the two went out and tied the flap securely behind them.

  It did not take Sprudell long to realize that Uncle Bill was correct in his assertion that he would have been lost alone in fifteen yards. He would have been lost in less than that, or as soon as the full force of the howling storm had struck him and the wind-driven snow shut out the tent. He had not gone far before he wished that he had done as Uncle Bill had told him and wrapped his feet in “Californy socks.” The strips of gunny sacking which he had refused because they looked bunglesome he could see now were an immense protection against cold and wet. Sprudell almost admitted, as he felt the dampness beginning to penetrate his waterproof field boots, that there might still be some things he could learn.

  He gasped like a person taking a long, hard dive into icy water when they plunged into the swirling world which shut out the tent they had called home. And the wind that took his breath had a curious, piercing quality that hurt, as Uncle Bill had said, like breathing darning needles. “The White Death!” Literally it was that. Panting and quickly exhausted, a
s he “wallered snow to his neck,” T. Victor Sprudell began seriously to doubt if he could make it.

  “Aire you comin’?” There was no sympathy, only impatience, in the call which kept coming back with increasing frequency, and Sprudell was longing mightily for sympathy. He had a quaint conceit concerning his toes, not being able to rid himself of the notion that when he removed his socks they would rattle in the ends like bits of broken glass; and soon he was so cold that he felt a mild wonder as to how his heart could go on pumping congealed blood through the auricles and ventricles. It had annoyed him at first when chunks of snow dropped from overhanging branches and lodged between his neck and collar, to trickle down his spine; but shortly he ceased to notice so small a matter. In the start, when he had inadvertently slipped off a buried log and found himself entangled in a network of down timber, he had struggled frantically to get out, but now he experienced not even a glimmer of surprise when he stepped off the edge of something into nothing. He merely floundered like a fallen stage horse to get back, without excitement or any sense of irritation. After three exhausting hours or so of fighting snow, his frenzy lest he lose sight of Uncle Bill gave place to apathy. When he fell, he even lay there—resting.

  Generally he responded to Griswold’s call; if the effort was too great, he did not answer, knowing the old man would come back. That he came back swearing made no difference, so long as he came back. He had learned that Griswold would not leave him.

  When he stumbled into a drift and settled back in the snow, it felt exactly like his favorite leather chair by the fire-place in the Bartlesville Commercial Club. He had the same cozy sensation of contentment. He could almost feel the crackling fire warming his knees and shins, and it required no great stretch of the imagination to believe that by simply extending his hand he could grasp a glass of whisky and seltzer on the wide arm-rest.

  “What’s the matter? Aire you down ag’in?”

  How different the suave deference of his friends Abe Cone and Y. Fred Smart to the rude tone and manner of this irascible guide! Mr. Sprudell fancied that by way of reply he smiled a tolerant smile, but as a matter of fact the expression of his white, set face did not change.

  “Great cats! Have I got to go back and git that dude?” The intervening feet looked like miles to the tired old man.

  Wiry and seasoned as he was, he was nearly exhausted by the extra steps he had taken and the effort he had put forth to coax and bully, somehow to drag Sprudell along. The situation was desperate. The bitter cold grew worse as night came on. He knew that they had worked their way down toward the river, but how far down? Was the deep cañon he had tried to follow the right one? Somewhere he had lost the “squaw ax,” and dry wood was inaccessible under snow. If it were not for Sprudell, he knew that he could still plod on.

  His deep breath of exhaustion was a groan as he floundered back and shook the inert figure with all his might.

  “Git up!” he shouted. “You must keep movin’! Do you want to lay right down and die?”

  “Lemme be!” The words came thickly, and Sprudell did not lift his eyes.

  “He’s goin’ to freeze on me sure!” Uncle Bill tried to lift him, to carry him, to drag him somehow—a dead weight—farther down the cañon.

  It was hopeless. He let him fall and yelled. Again and again he yelled into the empty world about him. Not so much that he expected an answer as to give vent to his despair. There was not a chance in a million that the miner in the cabin would hear him, even if he were there. But he kept on yelling, whooping, yodling with all his might.

  His heart leaped, and he stopped in the midst of a breath. He listened, with his mouth wide open. Surely he heard an answering cry! Faint it was—far off—as though it came through thicknesses of blankets—but it was a cry! A human voice!

  “Hello! Hello!”

  He was not mistaken. From somewhere in the white world of desolation, the answer came again:

  “Hello! Hello!”

  Uncle Bill was not much given to religious allusions except as a matter of emphasis, but he told himself that that far-off cry of reassurance sounded like the voice of God.

  “Help!” he called desperately, sunk to his armpits in the snow. “Help! Come quick!”

  Night was so near that it had just about closed down when Bruce came fighting his way up the cañon through the drifts to Griswold’s side. They wasted no time in words, but between them dragged and carried the unresisting sportsman to the cabin.

  The lethargy which had been so nearly fatal was without sensation, but after an hour or so of work his saviors had the satisfaction of hearing him begin to groan with the pain of returning circulation.

  “Git up and stomp around!” Uncle Bill advised, when Sprudell could stand. “But,” sharply, as he stumbled, “look where you’re goin’—that’s a corp’ over there.”

  The admonition revived Sprudell as applications of snow and ice water had not done. He looked in wide-mouthed inquiry at Bruce.

  Bruce’s somber eyes darkened as he explained briefly:

  “We had a fuss, and he went crazy. He tried to get me with the ax.”

  There was no need to warn Sprudell again to “look where he was goin’,” as he existed from that moment with his gaze alternating between the gruesome bundle and the gloomy face of his black-browed host. Incredulity and suspicion shone plainly in his eyes. Sprudell’s imagination was a winged thing, and now it spread its startled pinions. Penned up with a murderer—what a tale to tell in Bartlesville, if by chance he returned alive! The fellow had him at his mercy, and what, after all, did he know of Uncle Bill? Even fairly honest men sometimes took desperate chances for so fat a purse as his.

  Sprudell saw to it that neither of them got behind him as they moved about the room.

  Casting surreptitious glances at the bookshelf, where he looked to see the life of Jesse James, he was astonished and somewhat reassured to discover a title like “Fossil Fishes of the Old Red Sandstone of the British Isles.” It was unlikely, he reasoned, that a man who voluntarily read, for instance, “Contributions to the Natural History of the United States,” would split his skull when his back was turned. Yet they smacked of affectation to Sprudell, who associated good reading with good clothes.

  “These are your books—you read them?” There was skepticism, a covert sneer in Sprudell’s tone.

  “I’d hardly pack them into a place like this if I didn’t,” Bruce answered curtly.

  “I suppose not,” he hastened to admit, and added, patronizingly; “Who is this fellow Agassiz?”

  Bruce turned as sharply as if he had attacked a personal friend. The famous, many-sided scientist was his hero, occupying a pedestal that no other celebrity approached. Sprudell had touched him on a tender spot.

  “That ‘fellow Agassiz,’” he answered in cold mimicry, “was one of the greatest men who ever lived. Where do you stop when you’re home that you never heard of Alexander Agassiz? I’d rather have been Alexander Agassiz than the richest man in America—than any king. He was a great scientist, a great mining engineer, a successful business man. He developed and put the Calumet and Hecla on a paying basis. He made the University Museum in Cambridge what it is. He knew more about sea urchins and coral reefs than men who specialize, and they were only side issues with him. I met him once when I was a kid, in Old Mexico; he talked to me a little, and it was the honor of my life. I’d rather walk behind and pack his suitcase like a porter than ride with the president of the road!”

  “Is that so?” Sprudell murmured, temporarily abashed.

  “Great cats!” ejaculated Uncle Bill, with bulging eyes. “My head would git a hot-box if I knowed jest half of that.”

  When Sprudell stretched his stiff muscles and turned his head upon the bear-grass pillow at daybreak, Bruce was writing a letter on the corner of the table and Uncle Bill was stowing away provisions in a small canvas sack. He gathered, from the signs of preparation, that the miner was going to try and find the Chinaman. Outside,
the wind was still sweeping the stinging snow before it like powder-driven shot. What a fool he was to attempt it—to risk his life—and for what?

  It was with immeasurable satisfaction that Sprudell told himself that but for his initiative they would have been there yet. These fellows needed a leader, a strong man—the ignorant always did. His eyes caught the suggestive outlines of the blanket on the floor, and, with a start, he remembered what was under it. They had no sensibilities, these Westerners—they lacked fineness; certainly no one would suspect from the matter-of-factness of their manner that they were rooming with a corpse. For himself, he doubted if he could even eat.

  “Oh, you awake?” Uncle Bill glanced at him casually.

  “My feet hurt.”

  Uncle Bill ignored his plaintive tone.

  “They’re good and froze. They’ll itch like forty thousand fleabites atter while—like as not you’ll haf to have them took off. Lay still and don’t clutter up the cabin till Burt gits gone. I’ll cook you somethin’ bimeby.”

  Sprudell writhed under the indifferent familiarity of his tone. He wished old Griswold had a wife and ten small children and was on the pay roll of the Bartlesville Tool Works some hard winter. He’d——Sprudell’s resentment found an outlet in devising a variety of situations conducive to the disciplining of Uncle Bill.

  Bruce finished his letter and re-read it, revising a little here and there. He looked at Sprudell while he folded it reflectively, as though he were weighing something pro and con.

  Sprudell was conscious that he was being measured, and, egotist though he was, he was equally aware that Bruce’s observations still left him in some doubt.

  Bruce walked to the window undecidedly, and then seemed finally to make up his mind.

  “I’m going to ask you to do me a favor, stranger, but only in case I don’t come back. I intend to, but”—he glanced instinctively out of the window—“it’s no sure thing I will.

  “My partner has a mother and a sister—here’s the address, though it’s twelve years old. If anything happens to me, I want you to promise that you’ll hunt them up. Give them this old letter and the picture and this letter, here, of mine. This is half the gold dust—our season’s work.” He placed a heavy canvas sample sack in Sprudell’s hand. “Say that Slim sent it; that although they might not think it because he did not write, that just the same he thought an awful lot of them.